


Apology

by PeachyRenjun



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Adam doesn't know Michael is dead, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Character Study, F/M, Fix-It, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Michael Possessing Adam Milligan, Post-Episode: s15e19 Inherit the Earth, technically
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 20:01:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28783857
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeachyRenjun/pseuds/PeachyRenjun
Summary: Michael's last gift to Adam is an apology: a chance to live the normal life he should've had.Adam just wonders what he did to make Michael leave him.
Relationships: Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester, Michael/Adam Milligan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 66





	Apology

**Author's Note:**

> Me? Writing spn fic? In 2021? It's more likely than you might think.
> 
> (Fair warning: I have not consistently watched this show past season 6, although I have seen all of the episodes with Michael and/or Adam, as well as the full shitshow that was 15x18-15x20. There may be some small canon inconsistencies with any descriptions of Winchester drama.)

Adam wakes up in the same church they’d hid in when everyone began vanishing. Michael had hesitated, at first, to call it the _rapture,_ even though Adam had thought it was a fitting name. _The biblical rapture takes only the faithful, Adam. This is taking everyone. It’s my Father’s work--He is ending it all. And not the way He promised He would._

The church is not the same as it had looked, however long ago it was that they were here together. There are books--bibles, prayer books, hymn leaflets--splayed open across the front pews. It is morning; the sun is shining through the stained glass windows and Adam is _alone._ Not just absent the presence of other humans but, for the first time in a millennium, well and truly alone. It’s suffocating.

Adam does his best to push down the emptiness in his chest as he sits down in one of the pews. He looks up at the stained glass and the idols, the images of Jesus and Mary and the angels, _Michael,_ emblazoned throughout the sanctuary. He puts his hands together and bows his head, the way he’d always been taught to do as a child and had never quite settled into. “Wherever you are, Halo, I hope you’re alright. I don’t know how I’m back, or where you are, but--” Adam swallows. “You know how to find me. If you’re needed elsewhere, I’ll be fine on my own, but. Come visit, when you can.” _Come home,_ Adam doesn’t say. Part of him hopes the thought translates into the prayer anyway.

He walks out of the church a few minutes later, to a street that’s no longer empty. It’s still a quiet street, but there are lights on in windows, there are people walking their dogs, there are cars on the road. Whatever had happened, it had brought everyone back. Not just Adam.

Adam makes his way back to their apartment an hour or two later, after navigating the bus system for the first time in _ever._ Adam hadn’t had any paper money on him when he was raptured, or at least he’d thought he didn’t, but somehow he had a stack of ones and fives tucked helpfully into his jacket pocket. Being raptured must have messed with his memory.

He jiggles the key in the lock and tries not to remember the way that Michael would always magic it open or teleport them inside, not wanting to deal with things like old locks and un-greased door hinges. He swings the door open, takes a step inside, and takes off his shoes. The apartment, at least from the entrance, looks exactly as they’d left it. Dishes still in the sink, books still piled up on the coffee table, their little aloe plant sitting in the window sill. It’s not until Adam walks into the bedroom, flicks on the light and sees the little desk in the corner that everything changes.

They’d left the desk bare, clean of any books or papers. But now, the little wooden desk is _covered_ in piles of paper. Hesitantly, unsure of what he’ll find, Adam walks to the desk. The first thing he sees, on top of the tallest pile, are rings. Two plain, identical platinum rings. Adam picks one up, inspects it, and sees the carving inside, the Enochian that so clearly reads _Michael,_ and then a space, and then _Adam_ across from it. He picks up the other ring, sees the same engraving, and knows. He slips one of the rings onto his finger, tucking the other into his jacket pocket.

He begins to sort through the papers. There’s birth certificates, for an Adam Milligan who was born in 2000 and who lived in North Dakota, not Minnesota, but whose mother is still named Kate and still has no father to claim; there’s one for a Michael Shurley, born in 1997, in Massachusetts. There’s social security cards, drivers’ licenses, school records, bank account information, a marriage certificate, a name-change certificate so that Michael Shurley became Michael Milligan, a photo of Adam with a man that he’s never seen before and is just so undeniably _Michael,_ and for a moment, just for a moment, Adam _hopes._ That somehow, while Adam was gone, Michael had made this life for them. That Michael must be in another room or out for groceries. That he would soon return to Adam, even if it was in this form that Adam didn’t yet recognize and loved already.

Even though Michael had technically given Adam the rings, Adam knew he would have to throw the proposal right back at Michael; he would get down on one knee and ask him for an eternity together that he already knew Michael would say yes to. They’d hold each other until the morning came or until Adam fell asleep, whichever came first, and he knows that Michael would look at him with that little half-smile that said _you’re my everything_ and _I hung the stars in the sky once, and I’d do it all again for you._

And then Adam sees the last document, and it stops.

It’s a death certificate. Michael Milligan died in a car crash, only a few weeks before the current day.

Just like that, everything _shatters._ This isn’t a life that Michael had created for the two of them to live together, it’s a life that Michael had created so that Adam could live _without_ him. An unneeded, redundant confession of his love and an excuse for Adam’s grief and all the paperwork Adam would need to start his life over again. It is, in the most heartbreaking way possible, an apology. An apology for how Adam’s life was cut short, even if it had not been Michael’s fault the first time. An apology for dragging Adam out of heaven and authorizing his torture and using him as a pawn and pulling him down to hell. It’s an apology for the hope that Michael had given him, that finally Adam had found someone who wouldn’t leave him. It’s an _I know I ruined your life again and again, but now you can start over._

And Adam doesn’t understand. Because sure, he knew that Michael had always regretted how they’d found each other, but he’d thought they’d moved past it. They’d screamed and yelled until their voices could no longer take it, and they’d spoken until their voices could not take that either, and they’d whispered until their voices gave out all together and all that was left was the silence of the Cage. They’d not been yelling _at_ each other so much as yelling past each other, but when they let their anger at the world come out somehow it became burrowed deep within the other. And when they began speaking again, they’d known, without having to ever say it, that they’d forgiven each other. Or at least, Adam had thought they’d known. This apology seemed to contradict that theory, because that understanding had been part of their agreement, their agreement that meant respect and communication and _not leaving without saying goodbye._ Because Michael was gone, and this was his apology without a true goodbye. Because Michael was still out there, somewhere, without him. Right?

This paper-Michael, the Michael Milligan that Adam is legally tied to, he may be dead, but Saint Michael the Archangel _must_ survive. He’s older than the universe itself; if Adam is alive, then Michael is too.

Adam tells himself that, because he doesn’t want to hear the alternative.

\----

Adam does what Michael must’ve intended for him; he lives the life he never got to live. He starts back to classes as a junior the next fall, after spending the intervening months cramming all of the knowledge his transcript said he already had. He wears one ring on his finger and the other on a chain around his neck, and when classmates raise an eyebrow, he ignores it. He tries to tell one of the friends he somehow manages to make, a girl named Hannah with pink strands dyed into her hair, and somehow the words choke themselves in his throat when he tries to say, _“My husband was named Michael, but he passed away.”_ He starts to practice it in the mirror, looks himself in the eyes, those eyes that are now _his_ and _his alone,_ and he tells himself that Michael is dead, even if he never believes it.

Part of him wonders whether it’s his own fault, for telling Michael so many of his stories about the life he’d always envisioned for himself. Because Adam had always been on a normal track, quiet life with 2.5 kids and a picket fence and people that he could help, the same way his mom did. Michael, for all his infinite knowledge and ability to feel Adam’s every emotion, was deeply insecure. Adam could feel Michael’s emotions as well, of course, and so often he felt Michael’s unending hope and belief in his Father fading more and more. He could feel the fear behind it, the way that a few hundred of Michael’s millions of eyes would always watch Lucifer as if thinking _when did my morningstar lose his light?_ and _how long until I will fade and corrupt into what he is?_ and _has Father struck me down, the way that He told me to strike Lucifer down?_ There was a certain logic to it, that Michael would never have ended up in Hell if he’d been able to fulfill the destiny He had set for him. Michael still believed in things like that. Adam knew better. Adam had stared up at a stained glass angel as ghouls bit through his flesh and he’d thought _what did I do to deserve this?_ and he’d realized just as quickly that he hadn’t done anything. The just world fallacy: a belief that people hold because knowing the universe doesn’t care whether you were good or evil is too overwhelming to bear. Adam’s sense of justice, or at least of destiny, had shattered as he was eaten alive beneath the unseeing eyes of a glass angel. Michael’s persisted. Of course he would leave Adam behind to live out the life he thought Adam wanted. Michael thought he would only keep Adam from the life he deserved.

Things get easier and harder, when Adam finishes undergrad and starts med school. He gets a new apartment near his new school, and he has a roommate who’s too obsessed with schoolwork to question why Adam prays every night and looks forlorn for no reason and never gets even the mildest of colds. Adam’s immune system should be wrecked, with how much stress he’s under, but none of the bugs going around ever seem to stick to him. He sees a light blue glow around his eyes in the mirror, on early winter days when he should’ve been sick by now. It’s just lingering grace, he knows. There was bound to be something left behind after Michael and he had co-inhabited their body for so long. It’s not grace under Michael’s control, Adam knows it’s not, but there’s a part of him that can’t help that think that even Michael’s _grace_ loves him.

The Cage wasn’t a physical plane, or at least it didn’t act like one. It was a place, yes, but bodies became unimportant there. Adam had always been able to _see_ Michael, but it was in the Cage that he spent hundreds of years watching Michael’s true form do battle with Lucifer’s; that he’d learned Enochian purely from listening to the archangels screech at one another. Michael’s grace had never left him alone in the Cage, even when they were at their worst and could not speak a kind word to each other. It had cradled him, first in a bubble of protection that was careful not to press too tightly around his soul; and later, when Michael had come to the conclusion that the only destiny waiting for them was an eternity in the Cage, when the Cage had been sprung three times and yet they were left there to rot together, Michael’s grace cocooned Adam’s soul in golden light that brushed along every nerve and acted more like a lullaby than like a physical being. _Sleep,_ Michael had intoned, in his true voice that would’ve been incomprehensible if Adam hadn’t been listening to it for centuries. _Dream as you wish, and your dreams will become our reality._

Adam studies until he can’t stay awake and he gets into the residency program he’d dreamed of as a kid. He learns to tell people about his dead husband, and he becomes better at ignoring the pitying looks they send him when he tells them how long Michael has been dead and they say, “Even _f ~~our~~_ ~~_six_~~ ~~_eight_~~ _ten_ years later, and you still wear his ring?” Adam can’t explain to them that ten years on Earth is nothing; not when Adam had been with Michael for over a thousand years and they’d gone decades and even centuries in the silence. And somehow Adam knows that he should move on, that Michael never intended for him to wallow in his absence, that Michael probably would have approved of Adam marrying again and adopting a kid or two. But Adam’s _tried._ He goes out on dates with classmates and fellow residents who are willing to look past the wedding ring and the quiet sorrow and it never works out. Adam doesn’t want to watch when they leave as well.

For as much as Adam worried over Michael’s abandonment issues and held the archangel through the Cage’s never-ending night and told him that _at least you have me,_ Adam couldn’t shake the hurt in his chest that came from the bittersweet smile on Michael’s lips as Michael would respond _and you have me._ Because while Adam worried over Michael, he knew that Michael worried over Adam a thousand times over. Angels rarely _felt,_ but once emotion had crept into their beings, they felt everything stronger, more intense. Michael had known the way that Adam grew up tucking himself into bed every night and loving his mom for all her efforts anyway; he knew that John Winchester was a man who tried to fit into the shape of a father and never succeeded; he knew that Adam had been, for all intents and purposes, abandoned by his father, the same way that He had left Michael. Adam may not have done anything to deserve his death, but he had also never had many people who cared about him. He hadn’t been _worth_ caring about. Maybe Michael had finally learned that lesson too.

Adam gets an apartment of his own, once he can afford it, and he adopts one cat and then another and then another until the cats are everywhere. They watch him, but Adam no longer finds being watched unnerving; they brush past him, but their fur doesn’t irritate him anymore than grace brushing against soul would. They’re not human companions, but Adam isn’t exactly fully human either. The cats don’t care why Adam sometimes forgets to blink enough, why he squints his eyes and tilts his head in that owl-like way Michael was so prone to do. The cats want to be fed, and they want the barest amount of attention, and they’ll happily leave Adam alone otherwise.

They’d never been quite alone, in the waking dreams that Adam had created for them in the second half of their imprisonment. Having fake human companions would be too impractical, too _creepy,_ because Adam had been away from other humans for so long that even his imagination of them felt alien and uncanny. So Adam had created animals for them to keep, dogs and cats and bunnies and hamsters and fish, whatever seemed to fit the time and place Adam’s dreams had conjured for them. Michael hadn’t liked them, at least not at first, but he’d put up with them for Adam’s sake and somewhere along the way Adam swore that Michael’s affection flared up when one of the animals pressed its head into his hand.

Adam never tries to contact the Winchesters, and they never try to contact him. They probably don’t know or care if he’s alive, and Adam feels the same way toward them. For all Adam knows, they’d died years ago, maybe in some stupid way that would be unbearably _Winchester._ Adam doesn’t care. If they want to reach out to him, he’s sure they can find him. Internet and pet angel and all of that.

The Winchesters had hurt the most, at least for Adam. While Michael had believed the Heavenly Host itself would save him, Adam had no such faith in Heaven. The angels had manipulated him and forced him to suffer before, what was to say that they wouldn’t just leave him there when they came for Michael? But Adam had seen Sam’s soul, in the early years, across the Cage and enduring far worse than Adam would face within the Cage’s walls. Adam had almost felt a sense of kinship with him, not borne out of the blood they shared but out of the misfortune that had befallen them. And then Sam had been saved, and Adam had been left behind. He’d tried to keep hope burning within himself, to think that they’d only been able to rescue one soul at a time and that they’d be back for him in no time. But centuries passed, and no one came, and then Lucifer was gone because even _he_ had been let out of the Cage before Adam. That moment, that moment when the quiet came for the first time in an eternity, it was the moment _at least you have me_ became _I only have you_ became _we only have each other._ Because as much as the Winchesters had called Adam family, they’d left him there. They were _going_ to leave him there. No one was coming to save Adam, and no one was coming to save Michael either.

And one day, in this weird life that Adam has built for himself in the ashes of Michael’s presence, everything changes.

“Hey, kiddo.”

Adam’s head jerks up, tearing his gaze from the computer in front of him. Standing in his office, not five feet from him, is a man with a leather jacket and a lollipop. Adam’s never seen him before, but there’s an energy that seems to crackle through the room with his presence, telling Adam that this is no _human._ The remnants of Michael’s grace that live in Adam’s veins swell to attention, as if in warning. Michael’s grace _recognizes_ him. And it’s not Lucifer--Adam would recognize Lucifer anywhere, after spending centuries in the Cage together--and it can’t be Raphael, either, unless Raphael has changed dramatically in the past few decades.

“You’re...Gabriel,” Adam ventures a guess.

“Correct! Knew Mikey had a thing for the smart ones.”

Adam stands up, and he almost reaches for a blade that’s not there. “You’re dead.”

“And you should know that death doesn’t always stick.”

“What are you here for?” Adam growls, and he swears the grace within him is buzzing, and he almost sounds more like Michael than like himself.

“Hey, hey,” Gabriel says, putting his hands up in the air. The lollipop is still in one hand, making the gesture more amusing than pacifying. “I’m just the messenger, alright? Don’t get angry at me because Baby God is too awkward to come talk to you himself.”

“Baby...God?”

“Yeah. It’s a long story.” Gabriel returns to his more relaxed stance, popping the lollipop in his mouth. “Point is, Chuck’s dead, Luci’s kid absorbed his powers, and after a few decades of trying to run everything with only Castiel’s help, he’s realizing that a few archangels might be helpful to have around. Not just power-wise. Old secrets, stuff that only archangels would know.”

Adam tries not to focus on the implication of those words, what _only Castiel’s help_ means for Michael. It comes crashing nonetheless, as Adam realizes that his suspicions, his fears, were all being confirmed. He’s been praying to a dead man, to someone who’s not alive to hear him. Maybe this new God had heard Adam’s prayers, and he’d decided not to answer. “So he brought you back.”

“Yes. But I’m not exactly the most knowledgeable book on the shelf, at least not for the things Baby God needs to know.”

“So why did he send you to come talk to me?”

Gabriel sends him a look, a _you can’t tell?_ so clear in his eyes. “No way in hell he’s bringing back Lucifer, which leaves Michael or Raphael. Raphael’s got a stick up their ass with no reason to change. Michael, however…”

“Michael what?”

“Jack thinks that Michael can be constrained. By you.”

Constrained? This Jack would have to be insane if he thought that Adam had ever _constrained_ Michael. “Yeah, right.”

“Listen,” Gabriel says, taking a step closer to Adam. “You may not think you’re much, kid, but Michael destroyed himself in his grief over losing you. He was willing to give up _everything_ to get you back. And if you think that doesn’t mean much, sure, fine, whatever. But there are a lot of souls in Heaven that would be better off if Michael was back.”

Blond hair, caring eyes, the smell of bake-sale brownies. _Kate._ She’s still up there, still living in Heaven for better or for worse, and if getting Michael back would improve her afterlife? Adam would do it for her alone, even putting aside the ache that still sits in his chest. “I never said I didn’t want him back,” Adam says. “I just don’t think I’ll be as good at _constraining_ him as you think.”

“Yeah, well, that’s Jack’s problem, not ours.”

Adam sighs, and he looks at the archangel across from him. The air itself stands on edge in his presence, the same way it had for Michael, and yet Gabriel _burns_ so differently than Michael had. Gabriel is a sparkler; Michael was a forest fire. Gabriel seems determined, though, like he believes--as much as he is _only the messenger--_ that Michael needs to be back and that Adam needs to be there for him. And Adam, even after fifteen years and school and a career still wears Michael’s wedding ring. Of course he’ll bring him back. “Okay.”

\----

Gabriel takes him to a place in the woods, he’s not exactly sure where (angelic teleportation isn’t the most opaque system for its hitchhikers) but they’re in a circular clearing, with a car parked off to the side and three figures standing in the middle of the clearing. Adam’s stomach drops.

“So,” Adam says, trying to play it cool as he walks to the three. He turns to the young man who seems to glow, pointedly ignoring the 6’4” _irritant_ across from him. “I take it you’re Baby God.”

“Call me Jack.” Well he’s certainly chipper. He reaches out a hand, and Adam hesitantly shakes it. “I guess you’re technically my uncle, right?”

“Ummm...in what way?”

“He’s Cas’ kid,” said _irritant_ explains. “And Dean’s, by extension. So you’re his uncle-in-law, because of Cas and Dean’s relationship.”

Jack smiles, and it is _blinding._ Baby God, indeed. “I actually meant by Adam’s marriage to Michael, but that works too.”

“You’re--”

Adam stops Sam in his tracks by holding up his left hand, ring clearly visible. “He vanished and left me wedding rings. As much of a proposal as any, I guess.” He leaves out the already signed marriage papers and the death certificate because, well, those are the details of a paper-life never lived.

“But he’s been dead for fifteen years,” Sam says, looking to the woman next to him in disbelief. She just rolls her eyes.

“And I didn’t exactly _know that,_ did I? It’s not like anyone bothered to tell me.” So sure, Michael had certainly implied his own death, but that had only seemed like a ruse at the time. The fact that _no one,_ not Sam, not Dean, not Jack decided that it was worth _letting Adam know_ that Michael was dead-- Well, it just pissed Adam off.

“Listen, Adam, we should’ve reached out to you--”

“Yeah, yeah,” Adam cuts him off. He’s heard Sam’s apologies before, he’s not all that interested in them now. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

Sam hesitates, looks between himself and the woman next to him, and then back up to Adam. “Eileen and I are just here in case something goes wrong. In case something backfires and you get hurt.”

Adam almost has to laugh at that. “I’m a doctor, Sam. And as far as I’m aware, you’re not one.”

“Well, no, but--”

“I’ll be fine,” Adam says. Michael’s grace won’t _let him_ get hurt. “Don’t worry.”

Gabriel takes Sam and Eileen off to a “safe” distance, to sit on the car’s hood and watch. Adam would protest that nothing would _really_ be a safe distance, because it’s either safe or not as far as Michael’s true form is concerned. Hopefully they can get this through with quickly enough that Michael will be filling the absence in Adam’s chest before he can burn anyone’s eyes out. Adam wouldn’t particularly mind if Sam’s eyes got burnt out, really, but Eileen seems nice enough.

“Ready?” Jack asks.

“Always.”

Jack looks down at his hands and closes his eyes. His eyes are glowing even behind his eyelids, and God-like power seems similar in so many ways to archangel power. The fire and the force and the never-ending light. Power that was not so much _vast_ as it was _curled,_ vibrating in tiny pocket dimensions and bending spacetime to its will. Michael had once taken Adam to see the inside of a black hole, past the event horizon, because while _light_ could not escape its gravity, it was nothing compared to the sheer _presence_ of Michael. 

Adam feels the light as much as he sees it; hears a voice that had once sounded so foreign and yet now is perfectly understandable; he looks up toward the sky and he sees _Michael,_ glowing light and spinning rings and dozens of wings and millions of eyes. This is the Michael that he loves, the Michael that had surrounded his soul and held him close and damn near _fallen_ for him. This is Michael, who gave up his position as Heaven’s Prince in order to watch Adam work part time at a Starbucks and read books over Adam’s shoulder. Michael, who’d known the world was ending and known he would die too and had spent part of his final days on Earth creating a life for Adam on the off-chance that Adam survived to live it. Michael, who loves him and is loved in return and asks nothing else. The only thing that Adam can do is raise his left hand toward Michael, ring reflecting Michael’s holy light, and whisper _“Yes.”_ as if it is the only word in any language, living or dead, human or otherwise.

And then Michael is not _there,_ he is _here._ Here with Adam, cradling him in his grace and filling the absence that he’d left in Adam’s chest for a decade and a half. _Hey, Halo._

Michael’s apparition manifests at his side, and based on the gasp that Adam hears Sam let out, Michael’s visible to everyone this time. “Adam,” Michael says, bringing a hand up to stroke Adam’s cheek. He’s staring at Adam, at every inch of his face and his hair and his neck as if he can’t quite believe that Adam is real. “You’re alive.”

“And so are you.”

Michael’s composure cracks, and for once he wears an expression that looks so much like _Adam_ that Adam’s not sure which of them is the apparition. His eyes scrunch up, his lips twitch, and he looks like he’s going to cry but trying to smile. “How long has it been?”

“Fifteen years.” He knows that’s just going to spin Michael into a spiral of worry--he can already feel it, where Michael’s grace touches his soul; the stream of _what if he’s built a life for himself, what if I’ll ruin his life again_ flowing endlessly through their veins--and so he quickly reaches up to pull the chain around his neck out from under the shirt. He holds the ring on the end of the chain between the fingers of his left hand, so that Michael can see both rings at once. “Don’t worry, death itself can’t get you out of _this_ marriage, Milligan.”

He feels the surge of affection only a millisecond before he feels Michael’s lips touch his. They’d rarely kissed, before, because kissing felt so miniscule compared to the intimacy that sharing a body already entailed. But that was fifteen years ago, before they’d lost each other. When they thought they’d had eternity, or at least that they would go together when they faded. Separation had seemed impossible, then, something that neither of them had wished for and that the laws of the universe itself seemed to make so statistically unlikely that it simply couldn’t happen. Michael was the most beautiful star in the sky, massive and bright, vast and alluring; and Adam was a smaller but more heavily compressed star, but no less bright, no less massive. Their gravities would pull them to each other in perfect synchronicity, stuck in each other’s orbit and never falling out. That was fifteen years ago, before a black hole swirled through their galaxy and gobbled each of them up in turn, spitting them out without the other. They know, now, that their gravity is only tight enough to hold them together conditionally. But maybe, conditionally is enough to make something that feels like forever.

“So,” Jack says, when they finally let go of each other, “I suppose we can leave the discussions about Heaven for another day, if you two need some time.”

“It’s fine,” Michael says, turning to Jack. “What do you need?”

“Well, I just-- I need your expertise, sometimes. Castiel said that there were things that you’d know that would help.”

“And that’s why you pulled me from the Empty?”

Jack nods. “And because...you deserve a second chance. I didn’t see it at first, when everything had just happened, but I see it now.”

Adam has to stop and wonder whether Jack had heard his prayers; whether he’d spent fifteen years listening in on Adam’s quiet messages that he’d meant for only Michael to hear. Quiet recountings of his day, funny stories he thought Michael would have liked to hear, and sometimes, when it was closer to sunrise than to sunset and Adam still had not slept, half-drunk soliloquies over what, exactly, Adam had done to make Michael leave him behind. Had Jack heard him, and seen Michael through Adam’s eyes, and seen that he was _good?_

“Thank you,” Michael says, and it might be the first time Adam’s ever heard him say that to anyone who’s not Adam. For Michael’s sake, Adam hopes he’s not just saying it because he senses God’s power flowing through Jack. “I’m sure you know how to contact me, if you need anything.”

“Of course.” Jack looked over their shoulders. “Before you go--”

Michael and Adam follow his gaze, seeing Gabriel sitting on the hood of the car. Michael’s gaze remains neutral. “Brother,” he says, impassive.

Gabriel does a mock salute to Michael, and then nods at Adam. “Best of luck, you two. And congrats on the, uh, vow renewal.”

“I assume we’ll see you again?”

“Not unless you want to,” Gabriel pushes himself off the hood. “I’ve got myself some humans to look after. Sam and Eileen’s kids all call me Uncle Gabe, feels like I’ve gotta watch over them.”

Adam grimaces, and Michael’s internally laughing at Adam’s discomfort with the idea of Sam having _reproduced._ As if two Winchesters wasn’t enough. Well, it’s not like Adam could blame the kids for having a Winchester father, that would be a bit hypocritical. The kids were probably fine. Probably. “You know where to find us,” Michael says, as a backwards invitation that reads _and don’t bring Sam with you._

“Course. Bye, Mikey.”

Michael teleports them away before they can catch Sam’s attention, and they end up in a corn field that Adam’s never seen. _Did you panic and teleport us somewhere random?_

_…Maybe._

_Fair enough. You want me to take us home?_

_Yes._

Adam takes a deep breath and concentrates, pulling at Michael’s grace the way that Michael had taught him during the year that they were topside together. He imagines his apartment, the blue kitchen walls and the way the light reflects on the countertops, and then they’re home.

And then something furry brushes against their ankle, and Michael nearly teleports them away again on instinct.

_Don’t worry, it’s just one of the cats._

_One of?_ Michael manifests his apparition a foot away while Adam leans down to pick up the cat, and Adam can feel the confusion growing as Michael begins to count the cats perched around the room. “How many cats are there, Adam?”

“...Fifteen.”

“How did you-- I thought that humans imposed limits on how many pets an individual could have.”

“Well, they’re not really _pets,_ they’re mostly just strays that decided to stay.”

“Because you feed them.”

“I mean, yeah? What am I supposed to do, let them starve?” Speaking of that, Adam sets the cat he’s holding down and walks across the kitchen, pulling out the array of cat bowls from their places in the cabinet. He starts to fill each of the bowls with food, careful to make sure that the bowls have different proportions and ingredients for each cat, because nutrition is _important,_ even for nonhumans.

Michael doesn’t say anything in response, but Adam can feel the quiet anxiety brimming within him. Michael was never that prone to anxiety, when they were in the Cage. Despair, of course, but anxiety? It wasn’t an emotion that had ever struck Michael until they left the Winchesters’ bunker and Michael’s sole mission became hiding them from God. When it had come, it had been unending. Because God was omniscient, omnipresent; He knew that Adam was Michael’s weak spot and He would punish Michael using Adam. Michael had been certain of it. Adam would’ve said he was proud to inspire such strong emotion in Michael, but he hated to see him so tense. So he would brush his soul against Michael’s grace, more a gentle nudge than anything else, and wait until Michael was ready to say what, exactly, was bothering him.

Adam waits.

“It’s dumb.”

“Tell me.” Adam sets the dishes down on the floor. He doesn’t want any more of the cats putting their potentially dirty paws on the counter.

“You’re going to laugh.”

“Make me laugh, then, Mike.”

Michael sighs, and leans back against the countertop. “Even though our real selves are occupying the exact same space, I can’t stand to be this far away from you. Like I’m going to watch you disappear again.”

Adam frowns, and he steps closer to Michael, until he can take Michael’s hands in his. “It’s not dumb, Mike. You can stay right beside me for as long as you’d like.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

When they go to bed that night, Michael creates what feels like dozens of pillows and blankets, piling them high around the edges of Adam’s bed. It’s reminiscent of one of their favorite shared dream-spaces, a mismatched memory of one of the tents Adam had spent so many summer days in when he was a boy scout and of the pillow forts that Adam would build with his mom on her rare days off. Between the blankets and the soft curl of Michael’s wings and the weight of Michael’s full grace, Adam begins to feel at peace for the first time in fifteen years.

“Michael?”

“Yes?”

Adam bites his lip. He almost whispers an _I love you_ but the words feel out of place for a relationship like theirs. They’d never said it the first time around, whether in Hell or topside, and it was because they didn’t need to. It was because they’d known, from the emotions that transmitted through their connection and the soft way they’d smile at each other and the protective commitment and uncompromising honesty. It was in the way that Michael would always make sure Adam ate on a regular schedule, even though he didn’t need to eat, and how Adam convinced Michael to lay down and approximate sleep each night. It was in the way that _we only have each other_ became a choice instead of an inevitability, when they’d looked at each other across a table and chosen to stay together even though they didn’t have to. _Love_ was not a word that could encompass everything between them, but only because a lake on Earth is not as deep as the waters of an ocean planet.

“What was it like, the Empty?”

Michael’s brows furrow, and Adam can feel the mix of despair and loneliness and worry that flow through Michael’s grace. “It was… Well, it was just that. Nothingness, or as close as you can get. True isolation, so you can sit and think about all of your mistakes.” _Perhaps that is what the Cage had been like, when Lucifer was first left there alone._ “I thought about… I thought about you. I wondered whether you had been brought back, or if it had all been in vain. I wondered where He’d taken you, whether it was in Heaven or Hell or Empty or nowhere at all. And through it all, I wondered what you would think, when you realized what I’d done.”

Gabriel had explained everything that had happened to Adam, and even when he heard that Michael had betrayed the Winchesters to God, Adam couldn’t find it in himself to be angry. What had the Winchesters ever done for Michael? Sure, God had betrayed Michael, had cast him aside when he was no longer useful, but He was also the most powerful being in the universe, the only being with the power to snap life in and out of existence. He was Michael’s father, even if He didn’t deserve that title. Of course Michael had watched his world crumble and run back to the only being he thought capable of repairing it. How could Adam possibly blame Michael for it? “I forgive you.”

“I know.” _I can feel it._

Adam takes a deep breath in. Time to ask the one question that’s been on his mind for fifteen years. He’d already answered his oldest question, _why did Michael leave me?_ and in its wake is “Why did you do it? The rings, and all of the documents?”

“I’d already gotten everything with your name on it weeks before the rapture came. I knew you’d wanted to go back to school, even though you didn’t think it was possible. And then you were gone, and I knew that there were only three possible outcomes: we would both live, we would both die, or you would live on your own. And if it was the last option-- I knew you would grieve for me. You needed an excuse. So I wrote myself into your life as best I could, so that you would be able to mourn without people questioning you.”

Adam nods to himself. He’d expected that answer, and in some ways he’s known it from the first moment he’d seen the documents. But-- “Only three options? There was never an option where you lived and I didn’t?”

“Of course not,” Michael says, as if it is obvious, and all Adam can think of is Gabriel’s words. _Michael destroyed himself in his grief over losing you._

“Don’t do that again,” Adam whispers, as he turns to the side, laying his head down on Michael’s chest. His apparition has no heartbeat, but Adam feels the pulse of his grace within their body and feels comforted nonetheless. “If I ever die again, for whatever reason-- Don’t kill yourself over it. I’d rather have you than not, but I’m not worth dying over.”

Michael doesn’t say anything immediately, and Adam can feel the way he’s struggling not to argue Adam’s point. Eventually, the swirling of his grace calms into a gentle weight on Adam’s shoulders. “Maybe not. But you’re certainly worth living for.”

Things get better, after that. They can’t just bring paper-Michael back from the dead, not with Adam’s colleagues all knowing about Adam’s dead husband, and Adam wouldn’t want Michael to appear in a different body even if they could. So paper-Michael stays dead, but Adam switches to wearing one ring on each hand instead of keeping one on a chain. And if anyone notices the way that Adam no longer stares off into the distance, the way that Adam no longer prays on his lunch break, the way that he smiles more and laughs to himself and looks truly _alive_ for the first time in as long as they’ve known him, well, they just assume it’s a good thing and say nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> And then they go on to become an absolute cryptid and move hospitals every ten years, updating Adam's personal info when they do.


End file.
